An adaptive routing algorithm for load balancing in communication networks

In this paper, we study the packet routing process in communication networks. For efficient and reliable data transmission, the traffic load should be as uniformly distributed as possible in the network and the average distance travelled by the data should be short. The Internet has been demonstrated to have small-world and scale-free properties in its topology. Under the shortest path routing strategy, the traffic intensity of high degree nodes is much higher, thus causing congestion of the whole network. We propose an adaptive routing algorithm, which takes into consideration both the network structure property and the dynamic traffic information. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can effectively balance the traffic in the network and improve the overall traffic performance.